Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD
Focus, starting, and ADHD
Most advice about focus is written for a brain that starts easily. This area is not. It covers what ADHD actually is, how to make a start when starting is the hard part, how to bring a future consequence close enough to feel, and how to stop paying for it in shame.
What works for this
Implementation intentions
Putting things off is mood repair rather than laziness: delay removes the bad feeling straight away and the cost lands later. So the move is not more willpower, it is a plan specific enough to run without a decision.
One move, today
Write one sentence: when it is [time] and I am at [place], I will [the first small action]. Naming when and where is the part the evidence supports.
What matches
5 practicesThere are two ways to make something get noticed: make it louder, or quieten everything around it. The second is usually the one nobody has tried.
It applies to a desk and to a phone screen alike. Adding one more reminder into a busy field mostly adds to the field. Taking six things off the desk…
Say the plan out loud to somebody. A manager, a colleague, your wife, a coach. Hearing yourself explain it does something that turning it over privately does not.
The listener does not need to be an expert in any of it. Talking forces you to put things in order, and the gaps tend to announce themselves halfway…
Mindfulness practice is good for most people, and may help a little more if you have ADHD. Treat it as something supportive rather than as the treatment itself.
The honest version is worth having, because being told it is the answer and then finding it is not tends to end with people dropping it entirely. If…
Once a week, both calendars open on the table. Who is doing scouts, who has football, what is happening on Thursday. Twice a week if the house is busy.
The point is finding the collisions while there is still time to sort them out, rather than at eight on Thursday morning with coats half on. Keep it…
When the thing is over, sit down for twenty minutes and go through it: what happened, what worked, what did not, what you will do differently. Put it in the diary, because it never happens on intention alone.
The monthly report, the school year, the audit. Write the answers where you will actually find them next time, and be specific about the point it…